Digitized issues of The Spectator from it's beginning in 1828 are now available to read online;

http://archive.spectator.co.uk/issues

What a fantastic resource, Triceratops.  And free. Thank you. I don't quite know how to start on it, there's so much here.  And I don't really know the focus of the Spectator, not being a local.  General political magazine, like Time?  Or more specific?  Here people have digitalised most of our newspapers up to about 1920, and they are free and searchable too - wonderful for doing family research or general historical research.  Though they are not as readable as they are still in the original format and sometimes they don't read the words properly, so come up with oddities.  Also very hard to copy bits from.

Hi Caro, The Spectator is a conservative magazine with an emphasis on politics and culture, though in it's past it supported the Great Reform Bill of 1832, "The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill" and was pro Union during the American Civil War.

It's certainly something to spend time exploring on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Triceratops wrote:

It's certainly something to spend time exploring on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Perfect for today in other words.

I was looking at articles from the edition of 26 January 1867 (i.e. 150 years ago this week) and came across this wry little piece on the lack of news from America due to a telegraph cable being damaged in a storm:

http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/26th-january-1867/3/the-atlantic-telegraph-has-been-silent-since-monda  

The Atlantic Telegraph has been silent since Monday, in con-sequence of a great snow-storm which broke a land cable on the American side, but the Atlantic Cable itself is uninjured. We wish that its silence were less unimportant. People who thirst to know the last price of gold and Five-Twenties are in suspense ; but as regards political news, or what stands for it, the silence has been a change for the better. A see-saw of baseless rumours about the progress of the inquiry into the reasons for impeachment is the less objectionable the longer it is detained. in New York.

It seems that even in an age well before 24-hour television news, the internet and twitter etc, people were experiencing information overload from endless and obsessive reporting from the U.S. and consequently found welcome relief as a result of the interruption.